Hi, Aharon (I don't know if I am supposed to respond to this or not but here goes): list-style-position:outside-parent makes good sense to me and does solve the problems with lists.
It would be nice in html 5 I think but I am not really involved with that so don't want to make that decision.
Best,
--C. E. Whitehead
cewcathar@hotmail.com
________________________________
> From: aharon@google.com
> Date: Sun, 14 Nov 2010 06:28:14 -0800
> To: www-style@w3.org; public-i18n-bidi@w3.org
> Subject: Re: [css3 lists] list-style-direction
>
> Some fine-tuning (thanks to Anton Prowse to pointing out the problem -
> we have to talk about the (item) element's parent element, as opposed
> to "the list element"):
>
> list-style-position:outside-parent would work like
> list-style-position:outside, except
> that list-style-position:outside-parent will apply the direction of the
> parent element of the (list item) element to the marker box; [all the
> rest the same]
>
> Aharon
>
> On Sun, Nov 14, 2010 at 4:12 AM, Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin
>> wrote:
> Discussion at the CSS WG meeting at TPAC 2010
> (http://www.w3.org/2010/11/01-CSS-irc.html) resulted in a modified
> proposal, to which I subscribe:
>
> A new value for list-style-position: outside-parent (in addition to the
> existing inside|outside).
>
> list-style-position:outside-parent would work like
> list-style-position:outside, except
> that list-style-position:outside-parent will apply the list element's
> direction to the marker box; list-style-position:outside would, on the
> other hand, continue to use the item element's direction for the marker
> box. The marker box direction affects both the bidirectional ordering
> of the marker text and the location of the marker box, which is on the
> "start" side of its direction.
>
> It was also proposed that for list-style-position:outside-parent list
> items, the list item's text-align will apply only to the list item's
> content, not to its marker box, which will behave as if it had
> text-align:start. This is the current behavior
> for list-style-position:outside in WebKit. list-style-position:outside
> would, on the other hand, now be specified to apply the item's
> text-align to both the marker box and the item content, as is currently
> the case in IE, Opera and Firefox. This reason this was proposed is
> that with list items having text-align:start by default, the markers of
> lists containing opposite-direction items do not line up, even
> with ist-style-position:outside-parent, unless the WebKit approach is
> used.
>
> However, this reason would no longer apply if the default stylesheet
> could specify: li {list-style-position:outside-parent; text-align:
> match-parent}. For lists where all items have the same direction as the
> parent, such a change in the default stylesheet would have no visible
> effect at all, which is good. For lists where some items have the
> opposite direction, the default effect would be as follows (view in
> fixed-space font to get the intended effect):
>
>
1. ltr text.
2. longer ltr
> text.
3. RTL TEXT.
> 1. ltr text.
> 2. longer ltr text.
> 3. .TXET LTR
>
>
1. ltr text.
2. longer ltr
> text.
3. RTL TEXT.
> 1. ltr text.
> 2. longer ltr text.
> 3. .TXET LTR
>
>
1. ltr text.
2. longer ltr
> text.
3. RTL TEXT.
> 1. ltr text.
> 2. longer ltr text.
> 3. .TXET LTR
>
> Is such a change to the default stylesheet ok by you?
>
> If so, do we need to get it into HTML5?
>
> Aharon
>
> On Sun, Oct 31, 2010 at 7:03 PM, Aharon (Vladimir) Lanin
>> wrote:
> The following is a proposal for some bidi-related changes to CSS3
> Lists.
>
> 1. An additional list-related property: list-style-direction.
>
> The property would determine the direction of the list marker, when it
> is a separate box, i.e. when list-item-position is "outside". The
> effects of the marker's direction include:
>
> * The location of the marker box, since it is on the "start" side
> of list-style-direction. For example, with list-item-direction:ltr, the
> marker box is to the left of the list item.
> * The bidirectional ordering of the marker text. For example,
> with list-item-direction:rtl, the marker text "1." is displayed
> visually as ".1".
>
> list-style-direction would take one of the following values:
>
> * ltr
> * rtl
> * match-list
> * match-item
>
> For backward compatibility with CSS2, the default value would be match-item.
>
> Note, however, that since the marker box is displayed in the margin,
> and since a list by default only creates a margin on its start
> side, match-item works poorly for list items whose direction is
> opposite to the list's direction. This is the reason why currently,
> most or all of the marker is invisible for such items in all major
> browsers. Furthermore, it turns out that in many or most use cases (at
> least in Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian), the preferred look is to have
> all markers appear on the same side, even though different items have
> different direction. Thus, we would really want the default to be
> match-list, but can not make it so because of CSS2 behavior.
>
> As a workaround, we therefore propose that the default style sheet
> would specify list-item-direction:match-list for all ol and ul
> elements.
>
> 2. Currently, there is no interoperability regarding whether text-align
> applies to the list item marker when list-item-position is "outside".
> IE, Firefox and Opera keep the marker with the item, i.e. apply the
> alignment to the marker. WebKit, on the other hand, applies the
> alignment only to the item, but keeps the marker location constant
> regardless of text-align. As a result, there is a big difference
> between the way